Jayne Ann Krentz: Risk & Reinvention in Romance

---

Short Description

Jayne Ann Krentz looks back on nearly five decades in romance—from the rise of American sexy contemporary romance and Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women to futuristic romantic suspense, fated mates, cover trends, audiobooks, and the genre’s enduring cultural function. She explains why writers must know their core story, why old fantasies migrate rather than vanish, and why popular fiction remains essential in unstable times. Jayne Ann Krentz’s latest book is Enter the Nightmare, part of the Harmony series.

---

Tags

historical romance novels, romance scholarship, sci fi romance

---

Show Notes

Jayne Ann Krentz looks back on nearly five decades in romance—from the rise of American sexy contemporary romance and editing Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women to futuristic romantic suspense, fated mates, cover trends, audiobooks, and the genre’s enduring cultural function. She explains why writers must know their core story, why old fantasies migrate rather than vanish, and why popular fiction remains essential in unstable times. Jayne Ann Krentz’s latest book is Enter the Nightmare, part of the Harmony series.

Explore Jayne’s books and sign up for updates at https://jayneannkrentz.com/

Her latest novel, Enter the Nightmare, written as Jayne Castle, is available in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook: https://jayneannkrentz.com/book/enter-the-nightmare/ 

 

---

Transcript

Andrea Martucci: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to Shelf Love, a podcast about romance novels and how they reflect, explore, challenge, and shape desire. I'm your host, Andrea Martucci, and on this episode, I am absolutely thrilled to be joined by Jayne Ann Krentz, also known as Jayne Castle, to discuss her career in romance since the late 1970s and her latest book in the Harmony series, Enter the Nightmare, which is out June 30th, 2026.

Jayne, thank you so much for being here.

Jayne Ann Krentz: Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm looking forward to the conversation

Andrea Martucci: You, I'm sure do not remember this, but about 20 years ago we briefly corresponded, because I was writing a paper about romance novels in college, and I was using Dangerous Men and Adventurous and you mentioned an article that you wrote in Romance Writer Report, and I couldn't find it anywhere, so I reached out to you and I was like, "Hey, do you have this?"

And you were so kind. I think you mailed it to me.

Jayne Ann Krentz: Back in those days when we mailed everything, yes

Andrea Martucci: Yes. So I'm really, [00:01:00] really excited to be speaking with you today because my personal interest in romance, I have gotten deeper and deeper into more scholarly pursuits, it all started here.

Jayne Ann Krentz: I'm really glad to hear that. You know, back when we first met, romance didn't get much attention from academia, and looking back, we've come such a long way, in terms of not just respect for the genre, but growth of the genre, the changes in the genre, and academic, uh, attention to it

Andrea Martucci: Yes, exactly. And, I wanna go a little bit further before Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women in your career as well. But to start with this book, could you talk more about why at the time, I think this was published in 1992, why did you feel this was necessary, and how was it different from what was available at the time, inside and outside of scholarly work on romance?

Jayne Ann Krentz: Well, outside I don't think there was much at all. unless you count all the articles about how bad it was for us. It was,

Andrea Martucci: Yeah

Jayne Ann Krentz: that was still the days when people thought, that in [00:02:00] addition to vetting what children read, we should also vet what women read, ' cause you just never know what they might do with that information. so outside the genre, I would say it was all hit pieces usually around Valentine's Day would be the time you saw it in the newspapers and then it was a joke.

Inside academia, there were studies about it, but they were heavily into trying to fit it into theories of the patriarchy and feminism at the time, and what was and what should not be allowed.

And anything that supported romantic relationship tended to be seen as old school patriarchy. we were all indoctrinated apparently, just didn't know it. And the books were reinforcing it. So even though everybody who read them had a lot of fun with them, it was apparently bad for us. And that was the attitude from inside the academic world.

So those of us actually writing the books considered ourselves an educated, well-read bunch of people, and we [00:03:00] didn't feel like we had a problem with this, and we didn't really understand why everybody told us we shouldn't be reading them. So we decided to put together a bunch of essays from working writers.

At the time, everybody in that book had a lot of street cred. They were all well-published, high, a lot of New York Times bestsellers, and they were all successful, so they were doing something right in terms of publishing. So that's why we leaned on that angle, that they were working writers who knew what they were doing, and they had some thoughts about what they were doing, and those were the essays that we collected.

And then once the idea of doing this book formed, I knew it had to come from an academic press. It just wouldn't get the respect it needed within the academic community unless it was vetted through an academic press. So that being what it was, we were lucky because one of the editors at the University of Pennsylvania had actually worked as a romance editor for Harlequin. She knew both sides of the fence, and she loved the romance novel. And [00:04:00] sh- when I said, "Where should we go with a book like this?" She said, "Right here." And that's how we u- wound up at the University of Pennsylvania Press. And I'm, I'm still amazed every so often s- somebody will say, "Oh, I just got the book, I just bought the book" and I realize it's still out there after all these years.

Andrea Martucci: can you talk a little bit more about the conversations you were having with other, the other romance writers who are in this collection at the time? How are you having these conversations? Is this at conferences? Is it on the phone?

Jayne Ann Krentz: In those days it was pretty much on the phone. We only saw each other like once a year at RWA, Romance Writers of America, but we had networked at the conferences for a few years by then.

When I set out to do this book and edit this book, and I discussed with the editor how to approach it because the whole thing was about not defending the genre, but just explaining it, which is a different kind of exercise, that was when we just decided to what, 19 other authors what they thought made it work, explain why it works for you.[00:05:00]

Explain why it works for your audience. Don't try to defend it, just try to explain it, and that's, that's the exercise that they were all given, and that was basically it. We didn't assign topics or anything. People chose their own topics just based on what they loved to write about.

Some are more academic than others in style, and some are more businesslike in style, and, and that just reflects the backgrounds of the various authors who wrote the articles.

Andrea Martucci: You'd been having this conversation for 10 plus years at this point, you're seeing these news articles come in. And they're beyond disrespectful.

Jayne Ann Krentz: Yeah. Yeah, they were pretty bad

Andrea Martucci: Basically this had been brewing,

Jayne Ann Krentz: we were well aware of the general media, um, trashing of the genre. In hindsight, we probably reacted a bit more strongly than was necessary, and I say that because, some point during those years, I was at a conference which was genre writers in general, popular fiction writers in general.

There, there were bestselling authors from mystery, from science [00:06:00] fiction, all kinds of suspense, thrillers, you know, and me and some other romance writers. And when we all were standing around in a circle, every single one of them from every single genre complained about how their genre gets no respect.

So it's, so I, I came to evolve my opinion of it to some extent that, I think it was just that general, in general, popular fiction didn't get a lot of respect, and within that, this was the least respected of the popular fiction genres. But our culture in large part has not given a lot of respect to genre fiction, and I think that's largely 'cause we didn't understand why it was important.

And it, it's important because we use genre fiction to illustrate and affirm our culture's core values, and that's why it lasts. That's why people keep going back to it. They like to have their core values affirmed, and if they don't read your books, it's probably because your values and that reader's don't line up very well.

but when you think about it, we know what a hero is when we see it on the streets or in [00:07:00] the papers or in real life, and we know because of popular fiction. That's where our archetypes of heroic doing the right thing when the chips are down, no matter how flawed or how, how messed up you are as a human being if you do the right thing we know that makes you a hero, and we get that from popular fiction, which is big on flawed characters.

I mean, that's why, that's why they're so interesting is 'cause they overcome their flaws long enough to do what needs to be done, what has to be done to do the right thing.

Andrea Martucci: and it's a journey, you know? I see people trying to get characters who have no flaws, no problems that they need to overcome from the beginning, and it's the most boring book on earth if you do

Jayne Ann Krentz: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no, very true. I mean, Everybody's aware of their own flaws on some level or the flaws in the people around them, and it's overcoming them that makes the interesting story. Not succumbing to them, that's just tragic. That's just sad.

Andrea Martucci: Exactly. You started writing in the '70s, right? Although [00:08:00] I think your first books weren't published until the late '70s?

Jayne Ann Krentz: The first book I ever published actually was 1980. Uh, but I think it carried a '79 copyright. Basically I'm an author from the '80s on

Which is important because before I got involved in the genre, what was popular were, sweeping historical romances, which I didn't read and didn't wanna write. So my time didn't arrive until the whole boom in contemporary romantic fiction became a thing

Andrea Martucci: right. Well, and I was wondering, 'cause I was, I was reading your, uh, entry in Love's Leading Ladies by Kathryn Falk, you were talking about what books you were reading that influenced you, and that you had been submitting and you were getting rejections during the '70s, and then there was the boom in contemporary romance.

So what were the books that you were reading? What do you consider your influences?

Jayne Ann Krentz: Okay, my foundational books were Nancy Drew, okay? I start right there. Back to Nancy Drew. And the science fiction of the era that I had found on the [00:09:00] bookmobile as a kid, which would've been Andre Norton. And later, the book that changed my life and my career, it was called, Restoree by Anne McCaffrey.

Andrea Martucci: Hmm.

Jayne Ann Krentz: And that book was the first combination of futuristic setting and romantic suspense that I had ever found. As far as I'm concerned, it's probably the original. And I don't think it did her career any good because she moved on to dragons and, and fantasy. But she wrote that book I, that's the genre I wanted to write.

And the problem with that was that nobody was buying futuristic romantic suspense, which is probably what she found out and why she moved on. so I couldn't sell that kind of a storyline, but if I took out the futuristic elements, I could sell it, and I was okay working with the contemporary stuff, 'cause I like that, too

Andrea Martucci: so You basically launched, co-launched this line with Amii with Vivian Stephens with your book, Gentle Pirate.

So at the time you wrote this, there was no [00:10:00] model for the Candlelight Ecstasy line. I would love to hear about your process for writing this book and working with Vivian Stephens.

Jayne Ann Krentz: Yeah, in those days you submitted fully formed. Nobody was gonna take the time to do heavy editing. The editing was more what we'd call copy editing. The market was moving too fast. Editors were under too much pressure to get books out.

if you couldn't get a story together on your own, nobody was gonna help you put it together. So

Andrea Martucci: Mm-hmm.

Jayne Ann Krentz: most of us had a lot of stories of rejection, but over that time of rejection, we had learned to write. We, it, it was kind of a self-taught business based on what we were reading and loved to read,

Andrea Martucci: Mm-hmm.

Jayne Ann Krentz: which I think informs most writers, you know, that you tend to write the genre and the way you want it. Take the parts and elements that you love and work with those.

So in those days you submitted a complete manuscript and it was either yes or that was pretty much it.

And Vivian Stephens was an amazing editor in that she actually loved the books. [00:11:00] So she bought with her gut, she bought on intuition, and nobody else was doing that because most of the editors in the business didn't like romance or had some reason to think that it would ruin their careers if they published romance, and very few editors really wanted to publish it, so they didn't understand how, why it worked and how it worked.

But Vivian was a reader. She loved the books, and she recognized them when they worked.

Andrea Martucci: So had you just submitted to Dell the, the regular Candlelight Romance line, or was there a call-out for Ecstasy?

Jayne Ann Krentz: Now before that, it was basically Harlequin was the only game in town, and it wasn't even in town. It was up in Toronto. They published almost everybody from the UK and the Commonwealth.

I think at the time we only knew of one American author, and that was Janet Dailey. and the story was you'd get your rejection letter back saying, "Thank you, but we already have a North American writer." None of us could get published by Harlequin. It was just rejection, and there really wasn't a lot of options left after that. And [00:12:00] then somehow word got around that Dell was opening up this new line. You know, a lot of us pounced And by then it was just over the transom, a lotta agents were starting to open up to it too, 'cause they could see the new market.

So my first book was actually sold because I had sent it to an agent who knew about the Dell line, and she, she took it to Dell. most of my friends just submitted it directly to Dell, and same result, got published, When we compared stories later, this was the stories, yeah. Cathie Linz was in there and Suzanne Simmons and names that have come and gone, but at the time were big. And one of the reasons we got RWA together in the beginning was because Vivian Stephens told us all about it.

She said, " You wanna get together and talk about the..." You know, I mean, this is, this is happening. And so Vivian passed the word around about the RWA. I don't know how else we would've found out about it, honestly. And then once RWA clicked, that became the organization that you could meet and [00:13:00] greet.

Andrea Martucci: I collect books, so I, at some point I had collected about, like, 100 Candlelight Ecstasies, and I was like, "Oh, I should read some of these, since I've been collecting all of them."

But I think what's interesting about these is there's this understanding with readers today, particularly people who have only started reading recently and have only read more recent works, that older romance was not at all progressive and, you

Jayne Ann Krentz: I know, I know, I know. E- everybody thinks they've reinvented the wheel, I'd say.

Andrea Martucci: Yeah.

Jayne Ann Krentz: Yeah.

Uh, that, that's probably just true of human nature. I mean, if if you were born after the '90s, for example, and you suddenly decide to do a book involving a war hero, you think you're the first one that came up with that.

That's the nature of the business. People don't read the past, so they invent their version of it, and that's fine.

Andrea Martucci: I have opinions obviously about this, but I think that, um, there is this tendency to view romance writers of the past and romance readers of the [00:14:00] past as being regressive as opposed to conceptualizing them as people who live in a particular time, like there is a context that they live in, and they are trying to push things forward, but they're also dealing with the cultural exigencies of the time.

As far as I'm concerned, you are actually the writer of the first known contemporary romance with a, with a condom on page.

Jayne Ann Krentz: I don't, I'm not making any claims because I have no idea.

Andrea Martucci: And I'm gonna say my first known, because I was reading, Affair of Risk, which came out in 1982, and at one point he's talking about protection, and he fumbles for a moment, at the dresser before they have sex.

Jayne Ann Krentz: The classic

Andrea Martucci: like, "That's" the classic line. I was like, "That's a condom. He's putting a condom on." I was like, oh my gosh, I've just made a discovery because previously people had put out that Elda Minger with her book, Untamed Heart in 1983, was, was like the first known.

Jayne Ann Krentz: You just reinvent the wheel obviously.

I will say though that the reason it became a standard [00:15:00] issue in the 1980s in almost every romance novel had nothing to do with pregnancy. It was about our culture's horror and terror of AIDS. Pregnancy, the secret baby book will always be a trope that will be with us.

and for a while it was almost impossible to pull off that story because you had this sense of social responsibility, civic to show that your hero would have taken this precaution, and in the minds of everybody I know writing it was all about AIDS. It wasn't about getting pregnant, because that was an automatic death sentence,

Andrea Martucci: Mm-hmm.

Jayne Ann Krentz: and we all knew it, and it would've been the equivalent of having your, your characters light up cigarettes or do drugs or just, just, just not socially acceptable in, on that level.

So that's why it became a thing until the fear of AIDS dissipated. AIDS became a thing in about '81, '82 in terms of public knowledge, so it was all happening around the same time that I started getting published actually.

But my books [00:16:00] my core story always involves, dangers of risk, taking risks, and we all take them, and the trauma of reinventing yourself.

Andrea Martucci: Hmm.

Jayne Ann Krentz: are elements that go back to the beginning of my, my career, and I still use them today. ' Those are the, my sources of whatever power I have as a writer, that's where I draw it from is, is those two themes.

So the use of condoms fits into that story too. That the hero is going to it's a noble thing to do in that sense.

Andrea Martucci: Right. There was this big boom in contemporary romance starting in the early 1980s, at the very beginning of that era, it was like, "Oh my gosh, there's sex on page." Like, that was the big thing, right?

And so bef- like, before that, like Harlequins didn't have to think about, even if AIDS was on the scene, like you wouldn't think about it or talk about it because

Jayne Ann Krentz: 'Cause it wouldn't be on the page. Yeah.

Andrea Martucci: E- exactly. So when AIDS starts making the news and everything, was there resistance from publishers or editors

Jayne Ann Krentz: No, I, I never encountered [00:17:00] anybody telling me not to use it, and nobody I know did. But remember at that time we were dealing with American editors we had not yet started publishing with Harlequin. They were still doing their own thing up there. So American editors were probably more on the same sense of social responsibility as the authors but I certainly, I don't know of anybody who met resistance to showing condoms on the page really

Maybe if we were publishing with Harlequin, which had a different sensibility toward the stories. In the British story, the classic romance is always marrying up.

Andrea Martucci: Mm-hmm.

Jayne Ann Krentz: know, he's always, he's always a lord of the manor on some modern level, and she's always the secretary and she marries up, and that was a classic, British concept of romance at the time.

The American concept always pitched them more as equals. Sometimes she was the boss and he was the employee or something like that. It was a much more egalitarian setting.

The only reason people get antsy about the pre-2000 books is because it did become, later [00:18:00] became a thing that you weren't supposed to show the classic forced seduction, and that, that is what it is. It's if you don't enjoy the fantasy, then you're never gonna get it, and don't go there.

Andrea Martucci: Yeah

Jayne Ann Krentz: but I, I will say that when writers started pulling back from it, the newer writers started pulling back from it in the 2000s, what did they do? They had to have their alpha male fix, right? So they came up with vampires for crying out loud. You wanna talk about forced seduction?

That's vampires. That's what they do. Um, and v- and shape-shifters and the whole fated mates thing, "You are my mate." Talk about Tarzan, you know?

Andrea Martucci: Yeah.

Jayne Ann Krentz: So, so it never went away. The alpha male never went away. It just migrated into the fantasy genres. I guess readers and writers felt safer I don't know 'cause I, I've always enjoyed it, so whatever. When somebody says, "We, you can't do that anymore," I said, "They kept doing it, trust me." It's just...

Andrea Martucci: Yeah. Oh, [00:19:00] yeah. And I think some people say, "Oh, it's moved into dark romance." I'm like, it's moved into more, it's, it's more than dark romance

Jayne Ann Krentz: Yeah, the, the, the mafia romance is the classic. That's about as dark as it's gonna get, but that's where it went. I mean, that's

Andrea Martucci: Mm-hmm

Jayne Ann Krentz: And I think that's because the rom-com story has taken over so much of what we consider modern romantic stories. The cartoon covers, the cutesy covers, they bridge, what we used to think of as women's fiction and romance.

And they differ from women's fiction in that they always have a happy ending. But a lot of the themes they're dealing with are themes that were at one time more confined to what we used to think of as women's fiction, psychological issues, depression, something like that.

But with a happy ending, with a positive, optimistic ending. And they came out of romance because romance is the ultimate optimistic genre

Andrea Martucci: When you were reading books at the time and, and you're starting to meet authors, who are the [00:20:00] authors that you felt a lot of kinship with??

Jayne Ann Krentz: I enjoyed Elaine Raco Chase a lot. Those were good. Sandra Brown was big at the time. Iris Johansen, she started out in romance. Susan Elizabeth Phillips. Gosh, I'd have to get out the list.

Andrea Martucci: I feel like it would probably just be like the list of contributors to, uh, Dangerous Men

Jayne Ann Krentz: yeah, Diana Palmer was in there. And we were all if you've talked to us in person, you would call us modern women. You know, we had come out of college, we'd gone through the heavy period of feminism, had strong feelings about, you know, feminism, and considered ourselves feminists, I guess is what I should say.

But we were also married women by then, and when I look back, almost all the marriages are still intact, so we got lucky. And most of them had families or were start- getting ready to start families, and so I think we were women of the time, but we were also educated modern women looking into the future and writing the stories we wanted to read.

And I don't think any of us felt terribly put [00:21:00] down by the patriarchy. We held our own. And I think that's why we enjoyed the stories, because fundamentally, especially in those the stories w- the women demanding respect from the males.

Andrea Martucci: Mm-hmm.

Jayne Ann Krentz: And that respect always formed before you got married, before you said, "I love you."

You knew there was mutual respect. That had to happen on the page

Andrea Martucci: That is definitely a thesis that comes through in "Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women," and one that I used in my 20-page research paper, uh, after you helped me with that. So, before we talk about your latest book, which is coming out soon, just wanna talk about romance scholarship.

So a- As people talk about, there's this new era of aca fans, so people who are in academia but who are fans of romance and are kind of coming to study it from, from that perspective.

We don't need to, like, take a tour through romance scholarship that hasn't quite been what we, we all wish it could be, what is your wish list for romance scholarship?

Jayne Ann Krentz: I think the romantasy [00:22:00] genre, the arrival of the romantasy genre is, is interesting because, it's a classic coming of age story but female centric. In the past, most coming of age stories have been male centric. so I think it's interesting that women are now reading and enjoying a female character in her coming of age in- into her power.

I think that's an interesting phenomenon that you could probably get a paper out of that one.

Especially contrasting it with the, with the classic coming of age stories that historically were, were what people read.

I think it's interesting to see contrast that at the same time rom-com, which is a very gentle story in a lot of ways, it doesn't stress you out too much to read it. At the same time rom-com is becoming a thing, we've seen the rise of horror light

Andrea Martucci: Hmm.

Jayne Ann Krentz: And again, female-centric stories, people like T. Kingfisher, A House With Good Bones, those kinds of things. Simone St. James writing the gothic horror.

I think it's interesting that those [00:23:00] two kind of opposites s- romantic stories are coming up at the same time. I find that interesting, and I think there's a story there. Probably speaks more to what people read for rather than romance in particular, but within a genre. Because if you look at mysteries, they have cozies and they have hard-boiled thrillers.

You know, they have those extremes, and that's what we're seeing in, in the romance genre, which I think makes for interesting conversations.

the other thing that's evolved finally, w- that wasn't there when I wanted it, it was the, is the futuristic romantic suspense. The, the book of my heart that I wanted to write way back in the, in the '90s I can now write, so I'm very, very pleased about that, which is what the new one is, Enter The Nightmare, futuristic romantic suspense

Andrea Martucci: and I mean you did dabble in, uh, futuristic,

Jayne Ann Krentz: those first three books killed my career. By the time the third book came out, I couldn't get a contract under my current name because there was so much bad sales baggage attached to those books. People stood in line around the block not to buy those books

Andrea Martucci: [00:24:00] And for the podcast listeners, I held up Sweet Starfire. So this came out in 1986. So was it just not the right time?

Jayne Ann Krentz: It was the setting. I learned a couple of valuable lessons from that. First of all, I learned what my core story was and that I could take it anywhere. That's a valuable lesson for any author. But I also learned how important the setting is. There's a reason people love Regency romance and they're not particularly interested in earlier, you know, 1700s or maybe they don't like the Victorian setting.

They want the glamour of the Regency period, and that setting determines if they'll try especially a new author to them.

It helps if they recognize the setting. If you think about Sherlock Holmes, all of us can get into those stories. We don't need any background information 'cause we've absorbed it over time. We all know the foggy streets and the gaslight and the whole Victorian world or, on the other side, the Jack the Ripper story. Everybody knows that world. It's not alien to us is what I'm guessing saying. But if you pick a backdrop that is [00:25:00] totally alien, literally alien, like I did with futuristic, like Sweet Starfire and stuff, that's asking readers to jump into a world that they don't know if they're gonna like, and books are expensive, and you to buy a setting you don't think you're going to like.

It's like if you don't read serial killers, you don't really wanna read a serial killer story even if your favorite author wrote it. So I learned how important settings are and world building is, and the readers today are much more open than they have been. At least within the romance genre, I don't think you see that particularly over in mystery or thrillers.

Andrea Martucci: Hmm

Jayne Ann Krentz: Those settings are more defined and if you breach those settings, you're probably asking for trouble in terms of getting readers

Andrea Martucci: After that, that's when Amanda Quick was born.

Jayne Ann Krentz: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I had one of the secrets to surviving as long as I have in this business is being able to reinvent yourself. Um, I'll tell you, sooner or later the market caves and you, you need to move. What I learned from the futuristics was that I was really basically doing a marriage of convenience [00:26:00] story.

The risks of two people having to bond together in order to survive, and that risk was pretty standard in the Regency when, when women were pretty much married off to whoever had the money. The risk of marriage and the, and the marriage of convenience for both parties became a kind of a trope that, uh, I could f- fit my stories into

Andrea Martucci: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. In your, latest book, which is in the Harmony series and this world, you've been building this world for over 20 years now, right?

Jayne Ann Krentz: Yeah. Yeah. Never thought it would last this long.

Andrea Martucci: In this world, which, which I'd love for you to explain the world, but there's difference between the marriage of covenant, which I assume is what we would consider like a marriage,

Jayne Ann Krentz: Covenant, covenant marriage that's very hard to break up. Yes, legally. It's a legally binding, like old school marriages were. Yeah, getting out of a covenant marriage in my stories is the equivalent of a, a divorce back before [00:27:00] divorce was okay.

it was a devastating thing to do socially and financially

Andrea Martucci: and then you have the concept, it's literally called marriage of convenience.

Jayne Ann Krentz: Yeah.

Yeah. The marriage of convenience is for people who just wanna get together for a while, maybe experiment. It's basically a cover for an affair, that has some legal protections. That's what made it different from being an affair in my world. It has some legal protections primarily if she gets pregnant

Andrea Martucci: Right.

Jayne Ann Krentz: That automatically transforms the marriage of convenience into a covenant marriage.

Because the whole principle of my world, is set on colonists who were cut off from the home world 200 years earlier,

Andrea Martucci: Mm-hmm.

Jayne Ann Krentz: and they were pushed to the brink of surviving as a colony. And the people who set up the colony, the founders of the first colonies, decided that they would lock in the institution of marriage as the core building block of the society that they were gonna try and keep alive.

And that became the rule [00:28:00] for why the marriage rules were so strict is because the family was considered the social building block, and that had to be firmly entrenched. Everything in their society would be built on that.

And then after I set that up, we don't see this, but in the history of the planet, the story, I threw them back to a period that would have put them roughly at 1800 for us.

Andrea Martucci: Okay

Jayne Ann Krentz: With the same degree of, technology, 'cause all of the stuff they had from the home world failed. And we're now in the present equivalent to about where we are now. This is 21st century America is how it looks to us, and that's the setting I'm using for the stories, but with a twist.

And the twist is that the planet had a lot of paranormal energy circulating on it, and the humans have evolved, or their latent, paranormal powers have surfaced. Their psychic abilities have appeared in the population. So the dangers and everything revolve around the psychic kind of vibe that I've, that I use in the books.

And I love [00:29:00] playing with the psychic thing in the modern world too when I do the Jayne Ann Krentz books. I like the psychic thing because it enhances the sense of bonds and the dangers that I work with, especially the bond between the hero and heroine. And I think a lot of people can get into it because the psychic thing is not magic.

It's not supernatural. For most people, it's like one step beyond intuition.

And most people are fine with the idea, the concept of intuition, so this is just one step, one or two steps beyond

Andrea Martucci: I always think of your heroes as kind of being, like, nerdy in the best possible way. Like, you know what I mean? they're kind of, like, scholarly. They have their little research interests. And I think you see that throughout your career.

Jayne Ann Krentz: Yeah.

Andrea Martucci: Your early contemporaries, your historicals, it's everywhere. The fact that you're relying on more of, like, a scientific phenomenon, like something that can be studied and the rules are somewhat known but need to be discovered and understood better is such a good fit for for your heroes and, um,

Yeah

So enter the Nightmare, so as you said, it takes place in this [00:30:00] world. It's an alien world, there's this ancient alien ruins essentially that they're in. Different cultural things, but then there's, uh, a dust bunny, which the, the dust

Jayne Ann Krentz: bunnies, yeah. The dust bunnies taken over my Jayne Castle world. I don't dare write a book without them now. This is another lesson out there for anybody, any aspiring writers who might be listening. Once you've done dogs or dust bunnies or any little animal thing, you are stuck with it forever.

You can't escape. Readers, readers want that little critter. And the dust bunny is kind of ... I basically visualize it as a super fluffy English Angora rabbit

Andrea Martucci: Oh, okay

Jayne Ann Krentz: But then when it goes into hunting mode, 'cause it's a predator, it's not a rabbit rabbit, it's a little predator.

when it goes into hunting mode, the saying is that by the time you see the teeth it's too late. So, and they are companions I guess you would say. They hook up with a human in the story and that becomes their buddy

Andrea Martucci: They [00:31:00] are a great source of humor. And, um, it, it's funny, when you're talking about the dogs, it's like Jennifer Crusie, like I don't think she was allowed to contractually to write a, a book without a dog after a certain point, right?

Jayne Ann Krentz: Once you've done it, yeah, you've, you've, you've signed your own warrant.

Andrea Martucci: I mean, I think a lot of humor comes from sidekicks, particularly animal sidekicks. I won't spoil every scene, but the dust bunny in Enter The Nightmare is very memorable. When did you introduce the dust bunny in Harmony series? Or, and I guess it's like interrelated series

Jayne Ann Krentz: first, it's, yeah. It, it's a series, the reason it's, it's all standalone books because I use a different couple in every book. There might be some background characters who appear or communities or towns or whatever that show up, but each book features a new couple and their problems.

I've never been successful at stringing out the same characters for an extended time, over a extended series. One or two books is as far as I can push it. And the reason is because once I've fixed a couple's problems and they are happily [00:32:00] married, I don't wanna tear it up.

Andrea Martucci: Once they trust each other, why do you wanna break the trust?

Jayne Ann Krentz: Yeah. So I've always kind of been forced to do new couples each time, even though if you like the last couple, you'll probably like the next couple. They're not gonna be that dissimilar in terms of their core values and things like that. They are my characters.

And the dust bunny was there from the first book. The first two books, it's a much smaller role. I didn't realize what was going to happen. I didn't, didn't realize how they were gonna take over until about the third book, and I thought, "Uh-oh."

Andrea Martucci: This is actually a great segue into your readers. What kinds of conversations would you have with readers when you did events? Bring us forward to today. I'm assuming digital communication makes it a lot easier, but also more casual, very different

Jayne Ann Krentz: Yeah. Uh, usually if people take the trouble to write, it's because they either loved something or hated something. And I think where they go now is they do it in terms of the online reviews because they want the whole world to know their opinion, not just you.

so it's probably easier to dissect online reviews at the various spots if you wanna see [00:33:00] what readers are loving and hating.

Andrea Martucci: Mm-hmm.

Jayne Ann Krentz: And I don't go there, so I can't tell you

Andrea Martucci: Yeah. When you do hear positive things from readers, at events or, any sort of communication, what are they saying?

Jayne Ann Krentz: They usually respond to the, the vibe of the book. I loved it. For example, I do a lot of Beauty and the Beast tropes. I've always loved that story, and a lot of my most popular books feature that kind of a dynamic. a- And that's what they'll talk about.

They'll pick up on the vibe, and that's what you're going to hear about. And mostly they just say, "I like the characters," or, "I don't like the characters." It's as basic as that. If they don't like the characters, they don't like the whole dang book. They want those characters to resonate with them be people they would want to know, people they would like, uh, in person.

And that's why it comes down to, I think, if readers do resonate with your books, it's probably because they resonate with your core values, ' cause that's what's reflected in those characters. And I don't care what you do, you can't keep it off the page.

Andrea Martucci: Mm-hmm.

Jayne Ann Krentz: It's gonna be there, and people will either love it or hate [00:34:00] it.

The simple translation of all that is just, "I just really love those characters.

Andrea Martucci: Yeah.

Jayne Ann Krentz: They were so funny," or, " I love the way she told him to shape up." You know? They like, they respond to the repartee a lot in my books, and I, 'cause I'm a very dialogue-driven writer.

I'm not good at narrative. I resent having to write narrative. It's, it slows me down. I, This is where I always make my public service announcement that if you're reading one of my books and you come to a paragraph of description, please slow down and read every word because it took me forever to write that.

Andrea Martucci: Please appreciate the effort I put in here.

Jayne Ann Krentz: But when I hit the dialogue, when my characters start talking to others and not just to each other, but to others, that's when I'm flying as a writer. That's when I'm, I'm really on, because I hear the stories in my head through the dialogue

And that's when, that's when the characters come alive for me.

So a lot of my readers are also dialogue driven readers in that sense. They like dialogue driven books. They like that repartee

Andrea Martucci: Yeah. When I read, these older [00:35:00] publications where people are, like, writing in and saying, like, " Thank you so much for this. This is what this has meant for my life," or like, "How my life has changed because I have access to romance novels."

I think when I read things like that, to kind of bring it back to what maybe critics don't understand, critics or some academics may not understand about romance is, these are works that are not just entertaining, they're meaningful for people, and they make a big impact on their lives and their experience of their lives.

Like I'm not a very sentimental person, but I'll read one of those things and I'm just like, oh my God, like how can look down on something that meaningful to people?

Jayne Ann Krentz: Yeah. Because you're right. I mean, that's, that's what makes the books work, on that level, is that, like I said it, they're the most optimistic of all the genres, and we all crave optimism, whether we know it or not, you know? We, we respond to it. It makes us feel better. It puts us in a different space emotionally.

It affirms the core values that I was talking about, and it also [00:36:00] affirms at a very fundamental level our risk of losing a sense of community. These books often are basically creating a community with the relationship between the hero and heroine as the founding brick in that community or the founding element in that community.

We didn't have a word for it at the time, but now we do, a lot of the books have focused on found family, finding your people out in the world. That element was always a strong element, we just didn't have a word for it.

We, now, now we have a, now we have a f- a word for it. f- The found family and the whole foundation of the family thing is so elemental, and we recognize it on that level as so important to basically the survival of the species and the survival of our civilization. And that's not why we read it consciously, but I think unconsciously that's, that's why we go back to those stories.

It's the same thing as if you, you go back to mysteries again and again, even though there's, like, maybe five plots. You know? There's, like, five myst- five mystery plots. And you know how it's probably going to end. It's not like [00:37:00] there's a big mystery about the ending, you know? But you read them for that community, that world that you're stepping into and that sense of family and good versus evil, and justice triumphing, and when should it and should it not triumph, you know?

Where does justice start and where does

Andrea Martucci: Mm-hmm.

Jayne Ann Krentz: compassion begin? I think that's, that's why we go to popular fiction

Andrea Martucci: Yep. Yep. justice for me, I'm like, you know what? The real world is just too chaotic, and there's very rarely justice. So

Jayne Ann Krentz: Yeah. But we need to, but we need to affirm the value. We want to affirm the value of justice. We can't lose it. We can't turn and say, "Oh, well, it's never gonna work, we'll stop trying." That's not an option.

Andrea Martucci: That would be the end of our species if we did that, I think

Jayne Ann Krentz: yeah, yeah. We'd be in the law of the jungle kind of thing. Not even that 'cause there is a law.

There are laws in the jungle, and they're all based on community of one kind or another. Animals herd together for a [00:38:00] reason. I think that we need popular fiction, especially in rough times, because that is what affirms what we know to be right.

Andrea Martucci: Mm-hmm.

Jayne Ann Krentz: I've got a question for you since we're the other side of my questions here. You've been studying this from the outside and the inside for a very long time now. What stands out to you in terms of what's changed or what hasn't changed?

Andrea Martucci: Hmm. It's funny 'cause I actually think a lot of things haven't changed, um,

Jayne Ann Krentz: Yeah, I agree with you. Yeah, I agree

Andrea Martucci: You know? Like news articles,

Jayne Ann Krentz: Hmm

Andrea Martucci: I could word for word basically write a standard news article. It's like, "Did you know romance is a $1.4 billion industry?

And, but would you be surprised that the people who write it or read it aren't brain-dead idiots?" Like, it, it's just, it's... And I think, I think the language in articles is more subdued, like it's less overtly derisive, but it's not actually that different [00:39:00]

Jayne Ann Krentz: Yeah.

Andrea Martucci: So I, you know, I think that it's kinda trendy to say, Romance is different now," or like, "Romance is more respected now."

And I'm like, "Mm, I don't know." One step forward, one step back a lot of times.

I think what has changed a lot is obviously, uh, the, the publishing forces, the way the industry works modes of production essentially. You know? Like if, like once you can, you can do independent publishing that,

Jayne Ann Krentz: everything. That changed everything, yeah. There no more gatekeepers, yeah

Andrea Martucci: Exactly, and, in some ways, it's interesting then that, people started self-publishing a bunch of things that were kind of new and different that the gatekeepers would not have accepted. But then now the gatekeepers are turning around and being like, "Oh, now that you've proven that successful, let me,

Jayne Ann Krentz: Yeah.

publishing business.

Andrea Martucci: It's a business, yeah. I just see these waves like regency is popular, regency is not popular. People are interested in paranormal, people are not interested in paranormal. It's just up and down, and it's all kind of feeding off [00:40:00] of what came before.

so it's evolving, you know. Like, you can see the things that come out now, you can see how they're kind of borrowing from, or taking pieces of this and that from the past. But I-- it's weird. I, I don't actually think it's changed that much.

Jayne Ann Krentz: Yeah, I'm in- I agree with you. I agree with you. because people think it has, but a lot of that is based on cover art changes

Andrea Martucci: Yeah. Yeah, and, I don't know if you can tell, I mean, I actually really like the old cover art. And I think in particular what I miss about cover art styles of the past and how they've evolved is you could tell what you were getting.

Jayne Ann Krentz: Yeah.

Yeah

Andrea Martucci: Things shook out in the '70s where there was a little bit of confusion for a while where they were like, "Well, if we put a sexy cover on it, that makes it an epic historical."

And then people were like, "No, you can't just put that cover on this, like, dirge of a family drama stor-" You know what I mean? Like, like, ew, that doesn't... Or, or there were some books that were marketed as not romances that were [00:41:00] romances, and it's like they, they kind of figured it out, and then things were, you know, they evolved, but you could kinda tell what you were getting for a while.

And I do think that a weakness to a lot of covers today is there's no signifier for what you're getting. Like, it's not just a different signifier, there's just no signifier

Jayne Ann Krentz: Yeah, interesting comment. Yeah. And, and art departments in New York are always struggling to find something, something that sends the message of the book. When the first cartoon covers started coming out, I didn't think they would work, but they beca- they became a signifier of a certain type of romance, and I would say that for them, that look has worked, but now it's everywhere.

It's too common. So they're gonna have to find another look for that kind of book. Basically the rom-com crowd. They're gonna find another look. The first ones'll be hard to spot and, or we won't recognize them exactly, but if they work, then that'll become the look, the next look for that kind of story.

Cover art is a, is you're [00:42:00] always chasing the, the next look

And one of the reasons you'd go for a look, and especially in those days, was because so many, the vast quantity of romance was sold in paperback, which mean it had to be on a, on a rack with a lot of other paperbacks, and so it had to send a message.

If you were shopping at Safeway and you passed the rack of paperbacks, you knew which books you're interested in right off the bat, and if you read mysteries, you knew which ones to go for. And you had that old three seconds to catch the eye of the consumer, and it had to be a look.

so yeah, I think, I think that's less true now, but we still need a

Andrea Martucci: need a Yeah, I mean, right. 'Cause, 'cause you're looking at a, a lot of times if you're buying digitally, you're looking at this tiny little thumbnail. So, you know, the level of detail, you're, you're not gonna really get the impact of it, but it, you, you need a look. You need to

Jayne Ann Krentz: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. If you just put a blank cover on it, it won't sell, I can tell you that

Andrea Martucci: Something that I see changing, in this latest wave that I do not love is the prudishness. Your [00:43:00] generation of readers and writers, my generation did not like boldly hold a romance novel on an airplane with like a bodice ripper cover and be like, "Yeah, this is okay. I'm not gonna be shamed by this," for then the next generation or whatever to see that as embarrassing, you know?

Jayne Ann Krentz: Yeah

Andrea Martucci: I see that as backsliding that there is so much squeamishness around blatant, unapologetic sexuality, you

Jayne Ann Krentz: Yeah, yeah. No, it's true. and a lot of the market went to Kindle and e-books because it didn't have to deal with that issue

Andrea Martucci: I suppose now there's a push for a collector edition printed, you know, like hardcovers and sprayed edges and all of that.

Jayne Ann Krentz: Yeah.

Andrea Martucci: The physical object is cool again, but people, but they don't want it to be cringe. And I'm they wanna be,

w- I want it to be cringe."

Jayne Ann Krentz: they want elegant, beautiful covers, heavily decorated. It reminds me of the days when people would [00:44:00] buy the book in a paper form and then have it taken to a, a leather worker who put fancy leather studded covers on it and maybe little jewels and you know, to really decorate it up.

It's, it's became, becomes a collector's item. But that limits the market too, 'cause those are expensive. It's expensive to produce those, and your readers are gonna balk there's only so many of those they're gonna spend their money on. So that's always gonna be a, a niche market, I think

Andrea Martucci: Yeah. I understand the economics of that for publishers and authors, but I do also think it's turning reading into a kind of different activity than before. And, and I think it's kind of segregating, like, hey, if you're a high-volume reader, you have to read digitally because you cannot afford to read in the volume you're used to, you know, buying books or even, even if you use the library.

Jayne Ann Krentz: Yeah, yeah. And then there's the whole audiobook thing. That market is the one that's really booming and has been for some time now. That's [00:45:00] one I don't understand because I don't like to listen to audio. I don't like to have somebody telling me a story in my ear. But man, that's, that's the popular, that's the growth area, so

Andrea Martucci: Yep. Yep. I actually do like audiobooks, but yeah, I suppose even there you're seeing this kind of experimentation with the production values in a way it's not just functional anymore.

It's not just like somebody who's a good reader is reading this book. It's, now it's like a whole production, right? Like, you know, you've got the duets with, uh,

Jayne Ann Krentz: yeah, yeah

Andrea Martucci: and, uh, it's, which

Jayne Ann Krentz: like a play.

Andrea Martucci: Like a play. Yeah. Um, so anyways, it's, it's all, it's all interesting and, and we'll see what shakes out because it's not all gonna shake out

Jayne Ann Krentz: Well, and it, and it just speaks to the enduring popularity of popular fiction, period. No matter what you do, you're not gonna kill it off. We need it. You know, it's, It carries the myth, it carries values. We need it

Andrea Martucci: Exactly. Last [00:46:00] question. You've been writing now for over 45 years. if you count the things you were writing before you got published, maybe 50 years?

Jayne Ann Krentz: I don't wanna go

Andrea Martucci: Yeah. You're like, "Ah, that's, uh, too many facts." You've done a lot. you've written a lot of different genres.

Is there anything that you're like, "You know, there's, there's something I wanna try that I haven't tried yet"?

Jayne Ann Krentz: No, everything I've ever wanted to try, I've been able to find a home for in romance. It's really a wonderful genre to work in because it's so broad and so in scope. You can do so many different kinds of stories in it. Like you can add horror, you can add mystery, you can put in a serial killer if you want.

You can do the family drama thing if you want. The small town, any element, depression or anxiety, you know, a lot of my characters have anxiety issues. It's anything that I would wanna work with, I have never felt like I had to go outside the romance genre to publish it.

So I've been very happy there.

Andrea Martucci: Are you ever like, "Why am I still interested in doing this?"

Jayne Ann Krentz: I can't remember [00:47:00] a time when I wasn't telling stories to myself. I remember sitting in first and second grade and telling stories in my head. I guess if you grow up with it, it just seems normal. But I also would like to point out that everybody's got some passion.

They just don't recognize it as an art or a craft because it's natural to them. They just assume everybody else thinks the same way, and they don't. Everybody has a different mental world that they live in, and I think finding your passion is one of the great gifts that can happen in life, and that takes some searching.

I mean, I tried sewing, I tried cooking, I tried, I tried teaching. I tried a lot of things before I stumbled into writing, and then once I found writing, it was like I never looked back.

So anybody out there keep exploring. You know, find the thing that resonates with you and gives you inner satisfaction and that you can enjoy on your own, and you don't need anybody else to enjoy it with.

That's a great gift

Andrea Martucci: Well, I'm so glad that you found your gift and that you've been able to [00:48:00] enjoy doing it, and also that you've been in a position to share your gift with all of us for so long. And I, again, I just appreciate, your writing, your time, your leadership in shaping the story about the romance genre, the readers, the writers, all of that.

You have had a formative influence on what I am doing right now, so

Jayne Ann Krentz: Well, I am very glad that you are doing what you are doing because it, this is an important genre, and it needs to be highlighted. It needs to be noted. It needs to be respected, and the work you're doing enhances that, and that's good for writers and readers

Andrea Martucci: Well, thank you so much. And, folks should definitely check out your latest book, Enter the Nightmare, which is out June 30th, 2026.

There are many, many, many, many books by Jayne Ann Krentz, also known as Jayne Castle, Amanda Quick, uh, ooh, Stephanie James.

Jayne Ann Krentz: Yeah.

Andrea Martucci: And so if you are listening to this and you have not read a book by Jayne Castle yet, get on it. Thank you so much for [00:49:00] being here

Jayne Ann Krentz: Oh, thank you very much. I've enjoyed the conversation.

Andrea Martucci: Hey, thanks for spending time with me today. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, or review on your favorite podcast app or tell a friend. Check out shelflovepodcast.com for transcripts and other resources. If you want regular written updates from Shelf Love, you can increasingly find me over at Substack.

Read occasional updates and short essays about romance at shelflovepodcast.substack.com. Thank you to Shelf Love's $20 a month Patreon supporters, Gail, Copper Dog Books, and Frederick Smith. Have a great day. Bye. [00:50:00]